Interesting facts about the film "Prison" (9 photos)

How they filmed the film "Locked Up" with Sylvester Stallone, released in 1989. Stills from filming and a few facts about the film.





1. Sylvester Stallone agreed to play in the film "Prison" only because he had a short break between filming. Moreover, at that time there was no script at all. There was only an idea to make a film about a prison.

Due to the tight schedule, there wasn’t really time to write the script, so the script was written right during filming. Sometimes the crew even had to wait until the next script sheet was ready to start filming. At this moment, Stallone simply communicated mentally with the prisoners.



2. To make everything look as realistic as possible in the frame, the creators decided to shoot the film in a real working prison. But naturally their choice fell on the Rahway prison (now called the East Jersey State Prison), which was considered the safest possible.





Moreover, real prisoners and guards took part in the filming as extras. Many of them wanted to go to the filming, because in addition to the unique experience, each prisoner participating in the filming received coffee and donuts. In total, approximately 200 extras took part in the filming, who were selected daily from almost 2,000 prisoners. Naturally, for the safety of the real actors, additional security was allocated in case of force majeure.



Moreover, the guards who starred in the film also received an additional $93 for each day of filming, while the prisoners earned $26 daily.

3. According to the film's director, John Flynn, when he signed the contract, he had no idea what exactly the film would be about, since he had never even seen the script. To sign the contract, it was enough for him that the film would be about a prison, and Sylvester Stallone would play the main role in it.



4. During one of the shooting days, when the prisoners (extras) had to be counted and taken to their cells, the guards were missing a couple of prisoners. Because of this, all the doors were blocked, and the film crew and actors were forced to remain within the prison walls until the situation was resolved. Fortunately, the missing prisoners were found and during the recount everything came together.

5. Stallone was literally eager to perform all the stunts in the film himself, so he refused the services of a stunt double in almost all scenes. As a result, while filming a scene of a football match, he severely injured his leg and even almost broke it. But fortunately, everything worked out.



6. Actress Darlene Flugell became the only woman to play in this film. Even in the film "The Shawshank Redemption", which is also about a prison, two women appeared.



Actress Darlene Flugell

7. In 1989, two films were released starring Sylvester Stallone, namely “The Prison” and “Tango and Cash.” But the most interesting thing is that in both of these films his hero ended up in prison.

The next time Stallone will play a prisoner is in 2013 in the film Escape Plan, where his partner will be former competitor and now friend Arnold Schwarzenegger.

8. The film's composer was Bill Conti, who wrote music for many films in the Rocky series.

9. The secondary antagonist of the film "Prison" was a certain Chink Weber played by Sonya Landham, known for his role as Billy in the film "Predator".

In fact, this name was not taken out of thin air. Let's go back to the 70s, when Stallone starred in his first successful film, Rocky, for which he himself wrote the script. Rocky's biography is partly based on the biography of the famous boxer Chuck Wepner. Stallone even wanted to include a character with a similar name in the film Rocky II, but in the end this idea was abandoned.

However, Stallone did not forget about Wepner, so the character Chink Weber appeared in the film "Prison", whose name is a modified name of Chuck Wepner.



10. With a budget of 24 mmillion dollars, the film "Prison" collected only $22.1 million at the worldwide box office, which, of course, was a failure. But this does not take into account VHS sales, which also counted.



But the critics found the film to be quite bad. Moreover, for this film Stallone received a nomination for the Golden Raspberry anti-award as worst actor. And in 1990, Stallone even took the Golden Raspberry Award as the worst actor of the decade.

But despite the fact that the film was received rather coolly in its homeland in the USA, in the CIS countries unspoiled viewers literally admired this picture.

11. In Turkey, the film was released under the title "Free Blood". So the Turkish distributors wanted to attract viewers who believed that they were going to see the next part of the film “Rambo: First Blood”.